25 February 2025
From the multiple Ned Kelly Award-winning author and king of Australian noir comes the first Hal Challis investigation. Now a BBC Radio 4 drama.
There’s danger on the open road.
‘A master storyteller’ GUARDIAN
‘A superb chronicler of cop culture’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘The equal of Joseph Wambaugh and James Lee Burke’ THE TIMES
Challis returned to the abduction site that afternoon and later drove to the bayside suburb where Jane Gideon’s parents lived. They had nothing to add to what they’d told him the previous day. Their daughter had moved down to the Peninsula originally because she’d met a cadet at the Navy base there, and had stayed on when he broke up with her. No, he was serving in the Gulf somewhere.
When he got back to Waterloo he found Ellen Destry standing wary guard over Tessa Kane, who was perched on the edge of a steel folding chair and smiling a smile that his sergeant was bound to find insufferable. ‘Tess, how are you?’ he said.
‘Hal.’
‘Published any scoops lately?’
‘Scoops is a relative term in a weekly paper, Hal.’
‘Boss, I said you were busy and—’
‘That’s okay, Ellen,’ Challis said.
‘She says she’s got information.’
‘Got it, or want it, Tess?’
Tessa Kane’s voice was low and deep and faintly amused. ‘Both.’
‘When’s your next issue?’
‘Thursday. Then we miss an issue between Christmas and the New Year, and publish again on 4 January.’
Challis said. ‘A lot can happen.’
‘Hal, a lot has happened.’
Challis watched her stand and smooth her skirt over her thighs. She was shorter than Ellen Destry, always full of smiles, many of them false and dangerous, others lazy and uncomplicated. He liked her plump cheeks. Women disliked her. Challis had no opinion on the matter, beyond knowing that he had to watch what he said to her.
‘This information you say you’ve got,’ he began.
She cut him off. ‘Can we do this in there?’
‘The incident room? Tess, please.’
She grinned. ‘Just a thought. An office, maybe, instead of here in the corridor?’
Challis turned to Ellen. ‘Sergeant, let’s take Miss Kane into your office, if that’s okay by you?’
He saw Ellen sort out the implications. He was including her, not giving her the shove, so she said, ‘Fine with me, sir.’
The office was a plasterboard and frosted-glass cubicle further along the corridor, and once they were inside it Tessa Kane turned and said, ‘I was hoping—’
‘This is Sergeant Destry’s station, her office, her investigation – as my offsider. So, whatever it is you want to tell me, you tell her, too.’
‘Suit yourself.’
They watched her take a clear plastic freezer bag from her briefcase and lay it on the desk. ‘This came in the post this morning.’
A few lines of crisp type on a sheet of A4 printer paper. Challis leaned over to read through the plastic:
This is an open letter to the people of Victoria. I would be loosing faith in the Police if I were you. There running around in circles looking for me. What have they got? One body. But where’s the second? Gone to a watery grave? And now there’s going to be a third. She’s in my sights.
‘Oh, God,’ Ellen said.
Are you scared yet? You ought to be.
